With “Afterlife with Archie”’s first arc giving audiences Archie comics like never before, and proving a hit critically and commercially, the desire for more of its horrific version of Riverdale was huge. Shortly after the second arc started, Aguirre-Sacasa launched “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” too, leaving “Afterlife with Archie”’s second arc to be published over two years and, to this day, remain incomplete due to his involvement in the growing Archie TV universe. There is still hope for the series to return though, with it still uncancelled. With the series being plagued by production complications, how does it fair?
'Afterlife with Archie' #7
cover by Francesco FrancavillaAfterlife with Archie #6-10
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Illustrated by Francesco Francavilla
Lettered by Jack Morelli
Reviewed by Luke Cornelius
The second arc, as many sequels do, gets far bigger than the original. While #1-5 focused on the events of Riverdale alone, the scope of the series grows dramatically over these five issues by exploring the Nether Realm in #6 and introducing us to “Afterlife”’s version of Josie and the Pussycats in #10. It also incorporates more classic monsters, like vampires and ghosts. These additions to the “Afterlife” canon pack the series with far more ideas to provide this on-hold ongoing series with far more to explore in the long term.
With issue #6, we uncover the Lovecraftian roots of Riverdale’s zombie apocalypse, and the Josie-centered issue #10 combines vampiric immortality with the ever-evolving music industry to great effect. Both expand the lore of the series and the world that “Afterlife” inhabits positively. The negative to these two issues is that, for the most part, they feel like one-shots, rather than part of the ‘Betty: R.I.P.’ arc itself. Of course, with the arc incomplete, it remains to be seen just how things would have connected up by the end.
The three issues sandwiched between these two, however, fail to reach the heights of the initial five. Resuming a month after our survivors left Riverdale, there’s a sense that the characters have matured rapidly in that time. They’ve come to understand the reality that they now find themselves facing. The visuals of the book are the largest indication of this shift. Some of the male characters now having scruffy looking facial hair, because, as the book acknowledges, who has time to shave in the zombie apocalypse? Moreover, Francavilla’s colorwork differs in these issues too; gone are the distinctive red and blue tones, to be replaced with softer, more autumnal and earthy oranges and greens. These colors give the book a more haunted and raw feel. One of the successes of the first arc’s almost binary color scheme was that it supported the melodramatic elements of the narrative while also increasing the shock value of the horror elements. Now, with the more ‘realistic’ coloring, there’s no stylistic gloss to hide the choices the survivors are faced with, although the trade-off is that the melodrama seems more like a childish habit that this growing book can’t quite shake.
Flashbacks were another point of success for the opening arc too, playing a vital role in the emotional impact of the present’s events. In these issues they are used with increased frequency, with characters consciously trying to remember how life used to be. This reminiscing is primarily done by Betty who is rewriting her old diaries. Here, Aguirre-Sacasa’s script works to keep a strong sense of the innocence of the girl-next-door character, which is important for later events, but never integrates the flashbacks into the main narrative as neatly as in the first arc. Francavilla’s artwork, though, still presents the flashbacks clearly, with thick, wavy borders preventing the reader from being confused. When depicting Betty’s pre-outbreak memories, they are washed with a pale blue and, again, unlike the first arc, these memories are sad ones. There’s an overwhelming sense of loss of the normality of Riverdale, which, as is shown in the flashbacks, was not as picture-perfect as we’ve seen in other Archie comics.
The strongest issue in this arc is #9, which focuses on Reggie. Reggie’s guilt over Hot Dog’s death has been a continuing thread in the series, and it’s in this issue that Reggie reaches breaking point. In this issue, Aguirre-Sacasa expertly weaves together the ‘afterlife’ with the ‘Archie,’ with Reggie’s relationship with Midge being directly connected to the death of Hot Dog. There’s a perfect balance between the character drama from other Archie stories (or at least what I imagine them being about) and the horrific circumstances of this reimagining, which is what worked so well in the first arc. The conflict in Reggie’s character throughout this issue makes him a compelling villain; he intended to hit Hot Dog in a fit of rage, then wanted to save him, before deciding the best thing he could do is take Hot Dog to Jughead’s to spend his last moments with him. By the end of the issue, there’s a complicated fragment of sympathy for Reggie which makes him the series’ strongest villain.
Overall, “Afterlife with Archie” #6-10 move further away from the original Archie Comics by introducing more monsters and giving more characters the “Afterlife” twist. It’s not as strong as the first arc, although it laid the foundations for a much larger story. Francavilla’s artwork remains solid, even though the distinctive red and blue tones are reduced. As an arc overall, there could be have been more progress made with the core narrative of the Riverdale survivors, but its biggest and most inescapable weakness is that we never get to see all of the threads come together, with its conclusion, for now at least, remaining tantalizingly out of reach.
